shawnettehome
3 adults and a baby living together in a small 4-room 83 sqm HDB
House Tour

Step into our smol house with a farmhouse kitchen theme

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House TourVirtual House Tour

  • Modern Farmhouse
  • HDB (BTO)
  • ~900 sqft
  • 3 br
  • Living with Family
  • Hello! We are a couple who are first-time homeowners, and also first-time parents. We currently stay in our smol 83sqm 4-room HDB together with our mother and our beautiful baby, whom we welcomed in December 2022. 2022 was a special year for us as we finished our renovations, moved in and subsequently found that we were expecting a few months later. We face a lot of challenges managing our household in our smol house, especially with the amount of baby items needed and an elderly around. I am always on the look out for space-saving hacks and tips! Our renovation costs about less than $50k and we are blessed to work with our ID Roomable and contractor Treasure Pod. Our ID’s ideas and aesthetics aligned with ours and she provided valuable insights into our design choices. In addition, our contractor was also generally very responsible and we were very happy with the carpentry works. Highly recommend them! Welcome in and we’ll show you around our humble abode!
  • We’ll start off by showing you the just-after reno version of our modern farmhouse kitchen. My inspiration for the kitchen came from many overseas home IG accounts. I especially adored the farmhouse and cottage style kitchens, as they looked very homely and cosy to me. In order to achieve that, we opted for natural woody countertop from EDL to match our theme, swapped the original HDB floor tiles with vinyl flooring from Floor Xpert, opted for shaker cabinetry and a lattice cabinet feature, and white subway tiles for the kitchen backsplash.
  • We also opted for a farmhouse kitchen sink from Bacera and concealed the pipes with cabinetry. This is also where our washing machine and storage heater are “hidden” in.
  • And now, let’s be real. To be honest, it is not possible for the kitchen to be free from clutter, especially with our smol kitchen and a baby. I will be honest and show you our kitchen in its truest form 😌 In the foreground, you will see a white UV steriliser for sterilising milk bottles, and a milk bottle storage box. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I personally prefer a more lived-in look to a minimalist, clutter free tabletop as I think this is what makes a house a home, and showcases more of our personality. I also love pastel colours, which I think fits in well with our farmhouse kitchen theme.
  • Next, a peek of our kitchen from the outside which leads into our small dining area. The dining area has very limited space. To open up the space and allow more natural light in, we hacked down a wall for an open kitchen concept and we are pleased with this decision. We toyed with having either shiplap or the popular fluted design for our island and eventually decided on the former.
  • Welcome to our small dining area! As you can see, there is very limited space here. Hence our priority was to find an extendable dining table that can host a larger group of people whenever there are visitors, and yet can be reverted back to its original length [when there are no visitors] and still fit in this small space. The dining table from IKEA checked all boxes, is aesthetic and fits into our theme perfectly. The rattan light, as some of you might recognise, is from IKEA too. Dining furniture doesn’t have to come expensive. Pssssst our dining chairs are from Shopee and costs less than $40 each! 🤭
  • Ok guys, taking you outside to the entryway. Due to the small space, there is no foyer unlike in other typical 4-room flats, so we intentionally got a “sideboard” here from Taobao, which also acts as a shoe cabinet and holds miscellaneous bits and bobs like batteries, wet wipes etc. Most of our house decor items are from Taobao and I highly recommend this store 奶酪森林 which sells plenty of aesthetic 奶油 and “ins-style” decor.
  • Moving on to our living room. This is was the pre-decor state, shortly after reno just completed and blinds were installed. Our aesthetic blinds were installed by the friendly and awesome people at End Curtain. Hahah we decided against curtains to cut down on maintenance and have never regretted this decision 😅 You must have realised that our TV console is built-in. Yes we requested for a built-in as storage and space is very important for us due to our small space, and I always felt that the wall space above TV consoles was “wasted” and could be better utilised. My initial proposal was actually enclosed storage and not open shelves but luckily our ID suggested this and it has now served as a very good display TV feature wall. Others have arch displays, while ours is a TV display. 😄 Anyway I am thankful for this space to display aesthetic decor, although it eventually turned out to be more for aesthetic purpose rather than the original functionality intention 🤣 The bottom storage is where we store our board games and our karaoke system. It can also be used to store baby’s items eg. crafts in future. I am thinking too far ahead already IKR?! Now, please look up and you will see this gorgeous woody ceiling fan from Alaska [as in the brand, not country]. Really in love with our ceiling fan as it matches our living room aesthetic and most importantly it is a hugger ceiling fan, meaning it comes with a thick rod, which is my personal aesthetic preference.
  • After decor!
  • We had this swing from Taobao installed in this corner of the living room and I really loved it. It was very comfortable to sit in, chill with a cup of hot beverage while gazing at the scenery outside. The rattan coffee table was from Journey East, and we stored cushion covers underneath it. Due to small space and the swing [hahah having the swing was a priority then!], we were only able to squeeze in a 2-seater sofa from Castlery, but we supplemented with other seating options like the swing, pouf and a 懒人沙发 [lazy sofa].
  • Here’s a shot of our living room taken from yet another angle, to show you guys the scenery we are blessed with 😌 this is really a million dollar view and we enjoy waking up to it everyday. As you can see, this was taken during the Christmas period so the tree from Masons is there. So are the tall gnome and reindeer plushies from Tangs 🤭 oh ya, we decided on having a playmat from Wandermats even before having a baby for practical reasons and it turned out to be a great decision!
  • Moving on to the guest bathroom. The design was chosen by the husband, inspired by the vibes at his yoga studio 😆 We decided on sage green kitkat wall tiles from Hafary and terrazzo wall and floor tiles from Hup Kiong. Our shower accessories, taps and WC were from Rigel. Our sweet pink sink is from Modeste Bathroom. The odd shaped mirror is from Shopee and we are relieved our mirrors arrived in one piece. We decided on quartz for our bathroom countertops.
  • Next is our master bathroom. The contrasting herringbone tiles are from Hafary while the Peranakan floor tiles are from Lian Seng Hin. For our MBR bathroom, I requested for a top drawer to dump all our unsightly bathroom necessities in.
  • And last but not least, our master bedroom. So we installed our wardrobe but as you would notice, there is an awkward window where the wardrobe side is, so we were unable to extend the wardrobe. Eventually we got IKEA’s MALM chest of drawers to place underneath the window instead. We did not change out the timber floor tiles for all our bedrooms as we thought it looked quite nice, so some money was saved in that aspect.
  • It is really difficult to take a wide-angled photo here due to the small size of our MBR but this is how it looks like after reno. It’s not exactly the nicest styled bedroom here. Wallpaper is from Hello Circus - we opted for the jungle theme but asked them to remove the monkeys on it 😂 Sidetables are from Taobao. With that, we have come to the end of our first house tour! Please feel free to ask us any questions. We hope you had fun reading this as much as we had fun doing up this post. ❤️ hope to bring you guys more home-related content soon!
  • 19 September 2023
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